Description:

• Trees, shrubs, shrublets or woody climbers, very rarely subherbaceous; lepidote or with microscopic and sometimes macroscopic stalked glands
• Leaves opposite, or sometimes in whorls of 3 or 4, or rarely alternate, usually petiolate (rarely subsessile), almost always entire; petiole sometimes persisting (especially in climbers) forming a ± hooked spine
• Flowers bisexual, regular, or slightly irregular, 4- or 5-merous, in elongated or subcapitate axillary or extra-axillary spikes or racemes or in terminal or terminal and axillary, often leafy panicles
• Receptacle usually clearly divided into a lower part and an upper part which varies from patelliform to infundibuliform and is itself sometimes visibly differentiated into a lower part containing the disc (when present) and an often more expanded upper part
• Sepals: lobes 4 or 5 (rarely more), deltate to ± subulate or filiform, sometimes scarcely developed
• Petals usually 4 or 5 (rarely absent, in aberrant specimens and up to 7 in occasional flowers), small and inconspicuous to showy and exceeding the sepals, of various colours
• Stamens twice as many as petals, inserted in 1 or more, usually 2, series inside upper receptacle and usually exserted
• Disc glabrous or hairy, with or without a free margin, sometimes inconspicuous or absent
• Style free (in southern Africa species); stigma sometimes ± expanded
• Ovary completely inferior
• Fruit 4- or 5-winged, ridged or angled, sessile or stipitate, indehiscent or rarely tardily dehiscent; pericarp usually thin and papery, sometimes leathery, more rarely fleshy
• Seeds: cotyledons various
• x = 13 (11, 12, 14) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Combretum Loefl.
  • Loefling: 308 (1758) name conserved
  • Sonder: 508 (1862)
  • Exell: 101 (1978)
  • Van Wyk: 125 (1984)
  • Carr & Rogers: 173 (1987)
  • Carr: 13 (1988)
  • Carr & Retief: 38 (1989)
  • Rodman: 45 (1990)
  • Hennessy & Rodman: 149 (1995)
• Poivrea Thouars
  • Thouars: 28 (1811)
  • Sonder: 512 (1862)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 250, fairly cosmopolitan in warm climates, excluding Australia and Pacific Islands
• Southern Africa: Species ± 30, widespread in all countries and provinces, except in Free State (rare), Lesotho and Western Cape